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Working Life
 How can I make my mind up - will I cut the strings that tie my heart to this small nation where I found my soul 38 years ago? Is it time to hang up my passport so stamped with Uruguay on its pages? The peace and solitude is great, yet all is interrupted because I have to sweep dog hairs 3-4 times per day in our tiny cottage and to clean my husband’s mess in the kitchen (he doesn’t toss in the garbage can anything like apple peels or garlic skins or bones or cracker crumbs and alfajores papers.) He waits for me to do them or they would just sit there all day and night, macho style, or unless one of the dogs pulls remnants down on the floor hoping there is something good in them to chew. He leaves the garbage and all dirty dishes and skillets for me to clean after he has cooked whatever concoction he has invented. Giso is a real heart deep Uruguayan winter stew, none of which I could eat, being vegetarian. He is a healthy cook, though.
Sadly sushi is far far away in Montevideo, where, I must admit, I’ve had the best sushi in my life at Cafe Misterio, topping it with their Omelette Surprise (Meringue over a scoop of maracuja ice cream) and that’s saying a lot because I’ve traveled to Japan and all over the world and across the USA with sushi on my mind since1975. I started eating sushi in an elegant downstairs restaurant on Madison and 58th in New York City when I was writing fashion stories for the newspaper in the mid ‘70ties. Now, when in Memphis, I’m living on sushi since it became the soul of so many of us. And let me point out that sushi fresh from Kroger’s Poplar Plaza store in Memphis is hard to beat anywhere.
But here in the remote pueblo near Carmelo, I eat half a sandwich a day. Now Uruguay tea sandwich are beyond belief of good. Thin ham and cheese, tomato, olive, eggs etc. soft and fresh thin bread is a huge square and there will be top bottom and middle - yes thin - the same idea of tea sandwiches - not taking too much space. And then my Cimarron dog Attila shows up and insists on having as much as I will toss to share it with him. In this county men, especially those of the campo, are men first, great at cooking asado (think barbequed shoulder) and chorizos (sausages) (which take a long time on a grill of a barbecue cooking over a certain type of wood fire). In the countryside, women are ok when useful. Men make decisions, do the “mandados” (shopping, banking, business) drink messy “Mate” two or three times a day for a long period of time, and drive the cars. They bring home the enormous fresh strawberries but rarely blueberries or maracuja (passion fruit) , but the whole relationship stands up like - you , female, - in house; me, male, do what I want to do when I want to do, and don’t ask me questions.
For someone independent like I have been all my life, it has been a tough choice. Do I or don’t I? Marriage has not been my skill nor any kind of success since I stumbled into my first husband prospect in Ngorongoro Crater, near Karatu, Tanganyika (in those days. Now Tanzania.) I have always realize I had/have more than most, and my responsibility has been to share, to give, to help others reach their dreams. It’s just me. I never knew even to this day that marriage was supposed to be a sharing, a trusting, a fun and building relationship, or at least should be, and so I think God sends me to give opportunities to those with little hope and to save lives while somewhere in that midst, I hope, I’m able to survive and continue to smile. I’m a do-gooder who tries too hard to be generous, I guess. And my Spanish is awful. I learned from my ancestors: my grandparent and my parents were always helping others from the ground up. But I just didn’t get the point on how to share enjoyment and loving and above all trusting.
Every prayer moment these days, at the end of my road, I ask God if I am needed here to save this man I already saved, giving him a hope of life without crime when he finally finished 30 years in prison for being a bank robber and escape artist. He has no family, never knew his father, no siblings, but a tough mother who was a school teacher, who died of cancer. He respects women, but that’s as long as they stay out of the picture. I understand his toughness and I’ve been able to put up with his low grade respect that is sort of a woman abuse, not physical at all, but we don’t know anything of importance, particularly about soccer. In this tiny pueblo, everyone is so afraid of him that they won’t speak to me or even give me the time of day. Someone got my phone number and sent me a tirade that he was with all sorts of women, had a son a year ago with this girl who already had 4 or 5 children by others, and that everyone in the town knows that he is using and abusing me all the time. And my husband even tells me that he knows everyone in this town and no one would dare tell me anything. I’m not even allowed to take a town taxi anywhere. In fact I go nowhere unless my taxi bodyguard-friend for 35 years, Julio, who my husband trusts somewhat, comes all the way from Montevideo (3 hours) to take me to Montevideo so i can shop and see a few friends. But i don’t dare bother my friends of the good old days because I don’t want anyone to get tangle up in my mess. Yes, I had hundreds of friends back in the day. My 60th birthday which I shared with then husband Sergio Gonzalez, now deceased, we had over 300 guests. Those days I was the angel of the Uruguay prisons and the garden clubs.
So, do I quit and go back to what I love the most, what I’m known for on the other continent, a bunch of air flights away? I need my children, my friends, the church (it’s been cut to the ground here) and seafood. I’ll miss the view. True the wide Rio de La Plata is a beautiful river, where enormous ships transport goods to and from from the mouth of this river, at a distance, and this gives me peace. The dirt road is ideal for walking through pine trees and small cottages at the banario, where dogs whip out to see who is this, and bark my way past and now and then one tags on with Black, my dog, ex street-dog, and the barks irritate both of us. Black seeks peace as much as I do as he trots along almost nonstop. And he knows the routine and when to dive down a small cliff to the river so he can leap in, take a swim, and shake out all the “mugre” or dust and dirt that might have accumulated since the last time we cut down to the river.
This year, God’s grace came in not so religious Uruguay, not so catholic as the other countries on this continent, but with good farming crops of soya, wheat, corn, wine, all that feeds their sought-after cattle and sheep, and it is shipped around the world. A thriving business is eucalyptus trees shaved for paper for China who has made cheap cars abundant in this country, so many that the narrow streets are almost impossible to navigate in Montevideo. New is a tiny vehicle about the size of a large garbage can. (It’s tempting.) Outside the capital the John Deere tractors are so huge they take up the whole highway - but with tractors, which cost a fortune, a farmer doesn’t need to employ anyone but maybe a tractor driver and that tractor does the whole scene from planting to harvesting - and recording and bailing - it is amazing. Everything is done by machine and those monsters take up the whole narrow highways when they have to move from one spot to the next.
My favorite view in the three hour peaceful drive from Montevideo to Carmelo is the giant windmills, those enormous white poles with the wind driving their turbine electrical system which saves so much energy, cutting greenhouse emissions by 55 per cent. These almost sky-touching, it seems, depend on wind turbines activated by propeller-like blades turned by the wind. The propeller moves a turbine around a motor which spins a generator, which creates electricity. It’s ideal for Uruguay because most of this small country is land. When I see those white turbines against the blue sky as we drive home, it gives me joy. Sadly, the owner of those we pass sell the energy to Argentina rather than share it with Uruguay, which is desperate to lower the costs of electricity.
Decades in the past, Uruguay was respected for its middle class, but since the nasty military rule in the ‘70ties and 80ties, which, atrociously, the United States backed and taught Uruguayans how to squeeze truth out of any leftist, so many good people were eliminated. Anyone touching or suspected of being left wing or communist was killed or disappeared, not only here but in Argentina, Chile, Brazil. And with that military abuse, the middle class crashed and now Uruguay stretches from extreme poverty to extreme rich. Even their celebrated soccer players that led them to international championships and respect in 1930 and again in 2011, seem to have faded away. My first foot on soil here was as guest in the apartment of the superstar player Hector Castro, who kicked the victorious goal in Uruguay’s victory in 1930, the first World Cup ever. But the views across the ocean or the Rio de la Plata hold on to a majestic peace that passes all understanding. And there is always hope again with the new generations rising up with a clearer view of victory. And their current superstar Luis Suarez is coming home to play for his old team, National, after big successes on the Atletico Madrid team. There is hope.
~ Rev
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audrey@audreytaylorgonzalez.com
www.audreytaylorgonzalez.com
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